


A Very Javert Christmas Carol

by KChan88



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 20:36:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88
Summary: Javert survived the bridge the night of the barricade. Stuck in a mental limbo in the year and a half since someone stopped him from jumping into the swirling waters of the Seine, Javert finds himself visited by three spirits.Otherwise known as a Les Mis/A Christmas Carol mash-up.





	A Very Javert Christmas Carol

Javert was _not_ dead to begin with.

He never got the chance to jump off the bridge and into the unforgiving waters of the Seine.

Why?

One word.

_Stop!_

One person.

Cosette.

He didn’t get her last name, but he didn’t need to. He knew that name anywhere.

God, the universe, and everything else hated him, so it only made sense that would happen.

 _Stop!_ She cried out as she approached the bridge. _Please don’t jump!_

He’d spun around, careful of his balance and staring at the stranger in the night.

 _I’m Cosette_ , she’d said in increasing desperation when he didn’t immediately get down from his perch. He recognized the name immediately and his first wild thought was _Valjean will worry_ because he’d left the former convict at home and bolted abruptly in the carriage, unable to arrest him. How would he react when Cosette wasn’t there? _What’s your name?_

 _Inspector Javert of the Paris Police_ he said without really wanting to. He couldn’t jump now, not in front of her and he wasn’t sure the impulse would last. _What are you doing out here?_

He’d stepped down then, left with nothing else to do.

 _Looking for my father_ , she told him. _Though I suppose I should go home now and see if he’s returned. Are…are you all right?_

 _I’m fine_ he said before nodding at her and dashing off into the night without another word.

He’d never been _less_ fine.

That hadn’t improved in the year and a half since the barricade.

And now of all things, it was Christmas.

He _hated_ Christmas.

Maybe he should try the bridge again, uninterrupted. He’d been a less than exemplary officer according to his own standards since the incident because all he ever heard was Valjean’s voice in his head. All he ever did was question everything with no path forward. He felt like he didn’t belong in the force anymore, because everything was gray, and if he took Valjean’s lead he’d be going against everything he’d ever believed, and if he didn’t he’d be going against every changing thought that tumbled into his head that night on the bridge.

“Good morning!” a voice calls out, interrupting his dark musings. Javert looks up, seeing his underling DuFour poking his head into his office. “How are you today sir?”

“ _Fantastic_ ,” Javert says, though DuFour seems to miss the sarcasm entirely.

“Are you spending Christmas with anyone tomorrow sir?” DuFour asks, stepping further into the office and paying no mind to Javert’s grumpy eye-roll.

Javert looks down at the papers he was signing, resuming the work. “I’ll be here, as will you. Unfortunately people don’t cease committing crimes just because Christ was born.”

“But sir,” DuFour protests, his face falling in disappointment. “I…had planned to spend the day with my wife, you see. We’re expecting in a few months, you know.”

Javert looks up from the stack, thoroughly irritated even as another part of him tells him he ought to be kind to this young man who clearly looked up to him.  “If you had wanted the day you ought to have asked earlier instead of assuming. You may have the day, but you’ll work double shifts the following two to make up for it.”

“Yes sir,” DuFour answers, more subdued now. “Well, if change your mind I’m sure my wife would be glad to have you for Christmas dinner. We’ll have more than enough, I should think.”

Javert grunts in thanks, then makes himself say something more. “Thank you, DuFour. But I don’t care for Christmas. People too often play the fool and spend money they don’t have.”

DuFour crosses his arms, frowning. “Well, I suppose that’s true. But it makes people joyful, and I think they could use it.” He pauses, looking as if he might like to argue the point before his face changes, clearly deciding against discussing it further. “Oh, I forgot sir, but the prefect sent a note over saying he wants to see you the day after Christmas to discuss the letter you wrote.”

Javert stares at him, not understanding at first. “I’m sorry, the letter?”

DuFour looks uncomfortable, his eyes darting back and forth. “The one you left at the station house the night of the barricades? He said he finally received some feedback from the ministers he spoke with and wanted to talk with you about it.”

“Over a year later,” Javert mutters. He hadn’t intended on living after he wrote that letter, so it’s existence was problematic. He believed the things he’d written there still, but no one expected _Inspector Javert_ to question the way things were. Now he was left to defend what he’d written, and he scarcely knew how.  “Thank you, DuFour. You may go.”

DuFour doesn’t say anything else and goes out to his desk outside Javert’s office, though Javert’s certain he hears his underling singing some sort of Christmas carol under his breath. Javert opens his desk drawer, seeing the small pile of letters resting inside, some still unopened.

All from Cosette. All asking after him.

He wished he’d never told her his name.

They’d stopped abruptly a few months ago, right around the time Javert knows Valjean died. There’d been a small note about the funeral in the papers, and Javert had stopped by the graveyard once but Javert had been so overcome by the sight of the headstone that he’d left immediately after.

Should he have apologized to Valjean?

No, surely letting him go free had been enough. He’d compromised everything over it.

Perhaps Valjean told the girl Javert’s part in what happened to her mother. Javert never blamed himself for that before, but now…

Now he considered that he’d been cruel.

 _No,_ that other voice inside his head whispers, the voice of the man he knew before that fateful night Valjean spared his life. _She broke the law and you owe the child of a prostitute nothing._

But didn’t he?

Even if he had been wrong, what could he do to change anything for anyone? Helping one person at a time? Useless. Trying to change things all at once like those foolish insurgents? Illegal. The best he could hope for was keeping to himself until he died, and that was the end of the matter.

He pulls his coat and hat on before bidding a vague goodbye to DuFour, who says something Javert doesn’t hear and doesn’t turn back to acknowledge, stepping out into the bitter cold of Paris on Christmas Eve. A dusting of snow lays over the city, making it glisten in the starlight.

He supposes he should find it beautiful like other people do—didn’t they? He never took a great deal of pleasure in seasonal splendor—but he only finds it irritating and slippery. He passes a begging gamin on his way home, stopping short.

_Give the boy a coin, what does it matter?_

_He shouldn’t be begging. He should find work. You grew up poor and never begged for anything from anyone._

_What would Valjean do?_

_It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what he’d do._

_Doesn’t it?_

Javert growls, stepping past the boy, shoving his hands in his pockets and ignoring the new impulse to help. A few minutes later he arrives at home and steps into his dark apartment, hoping Christmas ends quickly.

He hates it.                                                               

* * *

 

Javert hears what sounds like a knock on the door when he finishes eating dinner.

“What in the devil?” he mutters, getting up reluctantly from his armchair by the fire.

He opens it, finding nothing and no one, the cold wind blowing flakes of snow and a small piece of paper toward him. He picks up the small slip and reads the contents, an inexplicable anxiety suddenly pumping through him.

_You will be visited by three spirits._

He huffs. What kind of prank was this? Who would care about him enough to bother?

Despite himself he feels a shiver run down his spine. He looks around outside, searching around.

Not a soul.

_Stop being silly. There’s no such thing as ghosts._

Except when he turns around and goes back inside, he…

He sees one.

The wind slams the door shut behind him, and he keeps staring at the apparition in front of him.

It looks like…Bernard, a fellow guard from Toulon. He floats wispy-white by the fireplace, his ankles and his wrists chained together.

“Why hello there Javert!” he says, leering more than smiling. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“I am clearly hallucinating,” Javert responds. “But as these are my rooms, it’s not such a surprise.”

“Oh, you aren’t hallucinating,” Bernard tells him, an inexplicable ice-cold wind blowing through the sitting room even though all the doors and windows are closed. “I’m here as much as you are. How do you think that paper blew in here?”

Javert scowls. “A prank, obviously. And you some figment of my overtired mind, or something I ate or…”

Wait. Was he finally losing his mind after everything that happened that fateful June night?

Bernard scoffs, not something Javert was aware a ghost could do, although he hasn’t spent much time thinking about ghosts, in general.

“As if someone cares about you enough to pull a prank,” Bernard says. “No one loves or hates you enough for that, do they?”

Red floods Javert’s face, and he clenches his fists. “I don’t care about that. Now…now go away.”

Bernard laughs, the sound sinister and unnerving. “Oh but don’t you? You should. You had the chance that night when that girl saved you from jumping off the bridge. You had the chance to change but all you’re doing is sitting in limbo, which will only make you crueler, in the end.”

Javert closes his eyes, running a hand over his face and hoping the ghost—no, the hallucination the _hallucination_ —will disappear.

He doesn’t.

Javert steps forward, shaking his finger. “Now…now look here Bernard. What do you want, hmm?”

He feels absurd.

“I’m here to warn you.” Bernard crosses his arms over his chest, another thing Javert didn’t consider a ghost could do.

“Warn me?” Javert asks, skeptical even as anxiety floods through him. “About what?”

“About what will happen if you don’t change your ways,” Bernard tells him. “About what will happen if you don’t actually make good on those things you thought about on the bridge. The things you’re so afraid of.” He lifts his arms, making the chains rattle. “Or you’ll end up like me.”

Javert narrows his eyes. “Are you…in hell?”

Bernard does that sinister laugh again, and though Javert doesn’t spend a lot of time contemplating heaven and hell, if anyone was going there it would certainly be Bernard. Not that Javert—especially at the time—thought anyone should be soft on convicts, but Bernard got in trouble more than once for beating them too much, and he was easily the most feared guard in Toulon.

“In the deep deep circles,” Bernard replies. “And if you don’t change….you will be too. Especially for what you did to that Fantine woman.”

Javert smacks his hand on the wall. “Stop. I don’t want to talk about that.”

“And her daughter saved your life, how ironic.” Bernard starts slowly disappearing, and now Javert doesn’t want him to go because he needs answers. “The first spirit will appear when the clock strikes one!”

“Wait, what?” Javert calls out as Bernard disappears entirely. “No! Bernard!”

He’s met with only silence.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters to himself. “I’m exhausted or I’m…I’m…”

He can’t come up with another word.

He goes to bed thinking about Cosette. About Fantine. About Valjean. Maybe even about those damned insurgents.

He refuses to think about ghosts.                                                                    

* * *

 

Light bursts in through the bedroom window, bright, pure-white, and searing.

The clock chimes loud, reverberating in his ears.

Javert sits up, tossing the bed-curtains back.

“What in the…”

He did not expect what he sees when he looks up.

“You…you…” he stutters, looking at the figure…the _spirit_ in front of him. “What are you doing here?”

The fair-haired spirit in front tilts his head, his blue eyes even more ethereal now than when he was alive.

And more frightening.

“You were told about the three spirits, I presume?” Enjolras asks. “I’m the first.”

Javert shakes his head, and Enjolras doesn’t disappear. “I didn’t…well I didn’t expect any spirits to actually show up and I certainly didn’t expect _you_.” Javert curls his lip. “I don’t want anything to do with a damned insurgent.”

Enjolras brushes a strand of his ghostly long hair out of his eyes. “Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for a while. I’m the spirit of Christmas past, for tonight. Take my hand.”

“I will not!” Javert exclaims, but he feels afraid now, and confused at the gentleness in Enjolras’ voice, though he does remember the boy offering him water at the barricade. That had surprised him, given Enjolras’ intensity and his anger, let alone the fact he’d sent Javert to his death at Valjean’s hands, even if Valjean never granted it, in the end.

Enjolras looks irritated now, putting his hand out. “Please just take it. I need to show you something.”

Javert’s hand starts shaking but he does as asked, finding a spirit’s hand much warmer than expected and not freezing to the touch. “Where…what do you need to show me?”

Enjolras almost smiles at him.

“The past.”

They fly out through the window.

Javert hadn’t counted on flying.

They rush over the rooftops of Paris toward a bright light like the one that burst into his bedroom, cool and white.  He can’t see anything as they go through the light, coming gently down into….

Lyon.

Outside a prison, in fact.

Javert pulls his hand out of Enjolras’ as soon as they hit the ground, his stomach sinking and his head throbbing. “No. Not here. I don’t want to be here.”

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says, and he really does look sad, and far too empathetic for Javert’s taste. He doesn’t need this boy’s pity.

Except he also doesn’t want to be alone.

He’s so used to being alone, he should be able to face this too. But he can’t.

He looks around, hearing the grumbling of the guards just inside the door and the clink of the prisoners eating in the mess. He’d spent his first six years in this prison, until they took him away from his mother and he spent the rest of his childhood raised by the state with other scamps and the children of low-lives.

Or perhaps just…the children of the unfortunate.

That’s what Valjean would say.

He never met his father.

Enjolras leads him into the prison, but no one seems to pay them any mind.

“They can’t see us or hear us,” Enjolras tells him, leading him back toward the cell where Javert’s mother was kept. Sometimes French prisons let women keep their children for a time, but not forever. If she didn’t die before her release, she never came looking for him.

Perhaps she couldn’t find him.

Perhaps she was dead.

They keep walking, and Javert starts when he sees a much smaller version of himself in the cell, his head resting in his mother’s lap, her long curtain of black hair hanging over her shoulder and a soft lullaby escaping her lips. The walls are cold and the prison dark and covered in dirt, devoid of almost any light save the tiny chink coming in through the bars on the window.

“You grew up here?” Enjolras asks, contemplating the cell himself, a melancholy gleam in his eyes.

“Until I was six.” Javert keeps his words clipped, because he doesn’t trust his voice.

“And that’s your mother?”

“Yes.” Javert looks over at Enjolras, words coming out of his mouth he doesn’t want. “The only person, perhaps, who has ever loved me.”

A loud bang sounds from somewhere in the prison and Javert watches his childhood self jump.

“Maman?” he asks. “What was that?”

“Nothing darling,” his mother says, running fingers through his hair. “Go to sleep.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Javert says, sensing Enjolras’ grief for him at those words. “I don’t need anyone to love me. I don’t need anyone at all.”

“Everyone needs people to care for them,” Enjolras answers, reaching out a hand toward the small Javert and his mother as if forgetting he can’t touch them. “I had…I had a family, in my friends. No matter what happened, I knew they were there, and they knew I would always return that sentiment. Sometimes…sometimes at first I worried close relationships would distract me, perhaps, from my work for the cause, but I…I realized my relationships with my friends were crucial. That I was allowed to have them. That they were the sparks that would start the fire of a revolution I still hope to see. They were…” he smiles sadly again. “Well they are so much to me. I love them very dearly.”

Javert looks at Enjolras, seeing him differently than he did before. Seeing the softness and the love in the fiery, determined insurgent who was willing to take on the French government for his ideals.

“My mother was Roma.” Javert tells this ghost of a revolutionary boy the secret he never tells anyone. “I was told I shouldn’t love her after they took me away.”

Enjolras blinks, and Javert wonders if spirits can cry.

“Come,” Enjolras says, taking his hand again. “We have one more thing to see.” 

Next, they land in another place Javert least wants to visit.

Toulon.

“Is this meant to torture me?” Javert asks, but there’s little bite in his voice.

Enjolras shakes his head, almost smiling. “It’s meant to show you. To make things clear. I don’t choose anything, the past just takes us where it likes.” Enjolras looks around, his eyes catching on the Mediterranean a short distance from where they stand, the water a bright, aqua blue. “I’ve never been to Toulon. My parents always took me to Brittany, to see the ocean.”

They watch as a twenty-something-year-old Javert walks past, his coat fluttering in the wind. They follow him into the prison, watching him grumble greetings to the other guards.

“Were you always alone?” Enjolras asks.

Javert looks at him, feeling as vulnerable with this ghost as he did that night on the bridge, and that frightens him. “I wanted to be alone. People could make me weak. I did better on my own.”

They follow Javert past a cell containing a familiar, sleeping face.

Valjean.

The younger Javert pauses as if sensing somehow this man will impact his life, but he doesn’t know yet.

He truly, truly doesn’t know.

Enjolras’ hand comes down on his shoulder, and the touch does feel cold now. “I don’t think that’s true. People make you strong. People teach you things and show you parts of yourself you might not have otherwise known.” He smiles again, memories held within. “They expand your soul.”

When Javert says nothing, Enjolras beckons him back. “Come. I need to get you home.”

When they arrive back in Javert’s cold, dark rooms, Enjolras lingers.

“You don’t have to be alone, Inspector Javert,” Enjolras says, making his way toward the window and carrying that white light with him. “I know we agree on very little, but I hope I’ve at least convinced you of that.”

Acting on an impulse he doesn’t understand, Javert grabs Enjolras’ hand again, finding it solid. “Thank you. I hope…I hope you get to see your friends again, in whatever realm you live in now.” He narrows his eyes, the air of a lecture in his voice. “Rash as the lot of you are.”

Enjolras’ eyes gleam warmly, for a ghost. “I’m going back to them now. Good luck, inspector.”

Javert’s room darkens again when the spirit leaves, and he collapses onto his bed, falling into a deep, deep sleep.                                                                    

* * *

 

The clock chimes two in the morning, only there’s not blast of white light from the window or the window coming open. Instead a warm yellow glow comes from the sitting room as if someone lit candles in the dark, the light pooling into his bedroom from under the crack in the door.

He opens his bedroom door, anticipation filling him up.

This spirit he should have expected.

A head of white hair, an unsure smile, and a crucifix around his neck.

Valjean.

“Hello, Javert.” Valjean smiles at him, looking as unsure as Javert feels.

He’s sitting in one of Javert’s two armchairs, so Javert sits in the other, hearing the chatter of people outside.

Was it morning?

It couldn’t be.

Yet he hears people singing Christmas carols out the open window.

“I suppose I should have expected you,” Javert says. “And who are you, exactly?”

Valjean smiles a little wider now. “The spirit of Christmas present. Let’s go outside, shall we? Take a look around and the joy of the holiday.”

Javert follows him outside, furrowing his brow. “I didn’t think you were particularly good at thinking yourself allowed joy.”

“I always loved Christmas,” Valjean tells him. “And it was always Cosette’s favorite. She decorated the house and I found her merriment contagious.”

They walk through the streets together for a while and Javert finds himself almost grinning at the fanfare outside: people laughing and singing and exchanging gifts at their doors, the smell of delicious food wafting out of the windows.

He…a part of him longs to be a part of it. But how? Why? Who was he, anymore?

He hardly knows.

“That’s the officer who works under you isn’t it?” Valjean points out a figure walking down the snow-dusted street hand in hand with a young woman.

Javert looks, feeling an unexpected fond feeling growing in his chest. “Yes that’s DuFour. How did you know?”

Valjean smiles with a hint of mystery this time. “Spirit’s privilege.”

“He invited you for Christmas, didn’t he?” Valjean asks. “You should go. I think he would like to be your friend, you know.”

They keep walking through the streets of Paris. They clearly have a destination, but Javert doesn’t ask where they’re going.

“You enjoy Christmas then?” Javert asks, feeling foolish walking through the city in his night clothes even if no one can see him. “I never really…understood Christmas.”

“I had fond, distant memories from when I was a child with my family,” Valjean tells him, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking ahead as they walk. “We were poor, but before my parents died we always had a nice dinner together. I always enjoyed giving Cosette gifts too, especially when she was small because she’d always had so little. I loved seeing the happiness and the joy in her eyes.” Valjean pauses, looking over at Javert. “I should have let myself have more joy in my life, I think. Especially at the end.”

Javert furrows his eyebrows, curious. “What do you mean?”

“I…” Valjean pauses, wiping his eyes. “There was a situation toward the end of my time and I thought my presence would ruin Cosette’s life and her new marriage. It’s…it is complex but I nearly didn’t see her, before I died. I separated myself from her.”

“ _What_?” Javert exclaims, stopping in his tracks and spinning on his heel. “Valjean what _drivel_ is that? You…you are….”

“I’m what, Javert?”

“You are a good man!” Javert blurts. “I…how could you do that? Why?”

“I made mistakes,” Valjean says. “But I did some things right, I think. Cosette she…she saved my soul in that way. After Toulon I feared that kind of personal love stomped out of me entirely. I feared no one at all would want me.”

Javert starts walking again, uncomfortable at the mention of Cosette. “I understand what she did for you,” Javert answers softly. “But don’t demean all the things you did before in Montreuil-Sur-Mer, all those people you helped. The things I ruined. Not to mention helping that Pontmercy boy. You risked your life for it. I’m sure there are plenty of other things you did I don’t even know about. Things I was too cruel to do before and things I…things I fear to do now because what can I truly do now to make up for any of it?”

Valjean stops this time, putting a careful hand on Javert’s shoulder. “I know what a difficulty it was for you, trying to make sense of me and the effect that had on your world. But the bridge wasn’t the answer. I…I am glad Cosette stopped you.”

Javert jolts, coming again to a painful point. The girl had saved him, having no idea how he’d treated her mother.

She’d also sent him spinning into an unknown world.

“You know about that?” Javert whispers.

“Spirit’s privil…”

“Oh lord spirit’s privilege, I _know_ ,” Javert sighs. “Do…does…” he trips on the name, making himself say it. “Does Cosette know about my part in what happened to her mother?”

Valjean nods. “In part. I left her a letter, before I died. But not all the details. Perhaps you could tell her.”

They stop in front of a house, and Javert realizes where they’ve been going all along.

Cosette and Marius’ home.

“She found out where I worked because I told her my name and that I was an inspector.” Javert studies the house, as large as his entire building stuffed with tiny apartments. “She’s been leaving me letters. They stopped abruptly around the time… well. Around the time you died.”

Valjean doesn’t answer, and somehow they inexplicably float into the house, coming in on the middle of a conversation between Cosette and Marius. Cosette sits in an armchair by the crackling fire knitting something that looks suspiciously red and green, the parlor decorated to what must be Cosette’s taste. A pile of gifts surround her, ribbon and paper and tinsel sparkling in the light. Gifts for her new family and perhaps even new friends, Javert supposes.

“It’s my first Christmas without Papa,” Cosette’s saying. “I…I normally love Christmas.” She looks up at Marius, tears spilling from her eyes. “Oh I’m sorry Marius, I don’t mean to ruin anything I simply….”

Marius rises from his own chair, running a hand through his shock of black hair before squatting down in front of his wife, looking worried. “I know, my dear. You aren’t ruining anything. I know you miss him. You don’t have to be all smiles today, but I do hope you can enjoy yourself.”

Cosette sighs, wiping her eyes. “I would like to try, but I think….it may not be my most joyful Christmas.”

“Cosette…” Marius clearly struggles with the words, and Javert feels sorry for the boy and his awkwardness. “I am sorry again, for the way I treated your father before I realized he was the one who saved me….I…I am still ashamed of myself for it.”

Cosette reaches down for his hand, pulling it toward her and kissing his knuckles. “I know, Marius. I know you are. I’m just…I’m glad we made it in time. I’m glad he died knowing that he deserved me. I love him so dearly.”

Marius stands up, pressing a kiss to her lips and coming to rest on the arm of her chair. “Have you…have you thought about writing Inspector Javert again?”

“I….” Cosette pauses, toying with a long brown curl. “I felt so sorry for him that night on the bridge. But then, I am also angry for the part he played in what happened to my mother, though I’m not sure that was my father’s intent in his letter, more just a piece of the story he had to tell. But I would like to know more. He seemed so…so troubled on that bridge. I think I’m the only thing that stopped him from jumping.”

Javert turns away, unable to hear anymore. “Please Valjean. Please let us go. Please.”

Valjean nods, but before they go he walks over toward his daughter, a ghostly hand lingering on her cheek. Cosette looks around her as if sensing someone touching her, a small smile on her face before she focuses back in on Marius and the presents around her. In a flash of that same warm yellow light they end up back in Javert’s bedroom, and Valjean starts disappearing.

“Valjean no, please wait!” Javert exclaims, suddenly desperate for the advice of this man he tracked down for so long, this man who changed him irrevocably. “Don’t go. I need your counsel…you…you are the only one who can help me.”

Valjean reaches out and presses Javert’s shoulder. “You can do this, Javert. You can change your life. You already have the tools you need. You just have to use them. You have to start.”

“Valjean!” Javert calls out, but it’s too late.

Valjean disappears in a cloud of red and green stars, vanished into the night.

Javert falls asleep again, deeper than ever.                                                           

* * *

 

Javert awakes in the snow.

Where was he?

He sits up, finding his nightclothes covered in snow and soot.

The sky is a slate gray above him, without an ounce of sunlight in sight.

Except for one beam hitting a woman standing a few feet away, her fair hair longer than it was in life—at least when he knew her—and she’s dressed all in black.

Fantine.

A wave of hot, sharp, overbearing emotion stabs at Javert’s gut with unrelenting pain. He falls down on his knees, the happy Christmas carols from earlier resounding oddly through his head and clashing with the image of Cosette sitting by the fire surrounded by half-wrapped presents.

“Fantine,” Javert whispers, that day she died pushing against his memory with force. “I’m so sorry. For how I treated you. I’m so very sorry.”

Fantine says nothing.

“Fantine?” Javert questions.

She still says nothing, reaching out her hand with a sad smile.

Both things surprise him.

He takes her hand, finding it very warm for the frigid air around them. She leads him toward a churchyard littered with gravestones largely devoid of flowers or ornaments where a priest stands over a pile of fresh dirt, a new headstone resting in place.

“What are we looking at?” Javert asks her, but she only points to the priest. They move close enough to hear his words, and cold fills up Javert’s entire body.

“We are here today to…” the priest looks around at the empty air around him. “To mark the passing of a dedicated police inspector.”

Javert turns toward Fantine, desperation clawing at him. “Which police inspector?”

She smiles sadly at him, shaking her head.

“What wretch has no one at his funeral?” Javert cries out. “What…” He hears voices at the gate of the churchyard, focusing on those instead of the priest, because he _knows_ who they’re talking about, he just doesn’t want to admit the truth.

“He is dead then?” a man’s voice asks.

Javert recognizes the man as a fellow police officer, and the woman standing next to him the portress from his building.

“Died in the night,” his portress says. “I don’t know if he was ill, or…well he never talked to anyone, you know.”

“Oh I know,” Javert’s fellow officer answers. “Only talked to the rest of us when he had to for work, and he was always harsher on the wretches than the rest of us. You wouldn’t catch him showing mercy. He started acting funny after the barricades in ’32, though. Couldn’t ever figure out why.”

By the time Javert finishes listening to their conversation the priest is gone, left with little to do with no attendees at this sad, solitary funeral.

“Are they…are you certain they’re talking about me?” Javert asks Fantine in a small voice, ashamed of his own fear, but for all his determination to be alone his entire life, it strikes him full in the chest now, painful and strong.

He doesn’t want to be alone now. He doesn’t want to leave only a reputation of mercilessness behind him.

Fantine points toward the headstone and Javert walks forward, brushing the snow away.

_Martin Javert._

Tears spill down Javert’s cheeks, and he cannot honestly recall the last time he cried like this, let alone cried at all. He almost says he feels like he did that night on the bridge, except…

Except…

Now he might know where to start.

He just needs the time.

“This isn’t written in stone, is it?” Javert asks Fantine, standing up from the snow. “If I change this can change, can’t it? Please just… tell me it can. I can’t change what I did to you but I can change. I swear it.”

Fantine looks at him for a long, long moment. Still, she says nothing.

But finally, she nods.

Then, she smiles.

She disappears into that beam of sunlight from earlier and Javert’s world spins in a swirl of gray and dirtied snow, leaving the graveyard behind him.                                                                     

* * *

 

Sunlight’s streaming through the window when Javert wakes up again. He sits up in bed, searching the room for any leftover spirits, but there’s no sign of Enjolras, Valjean, or Fantine. He pushes his bedroom window open, looking out into the street.

He hears something.

Christmas carols.

He grins, the sensation feeling strange on his face.

He doesn’t ever grin.

He was alive.

He wasn’t dead.

What happened last night? Did he hallucinate? Did he dream?

Was it real?

It didn’t matter.

He knows what he has to do.

Well, two things.

He dresses quickly, dashing out the door and running into his portress on the way out. He stops, tipping his hat at her. “Merry Christmas, Madame Belmont. Plans for the day?”

She pauses, looking at him in bewilderment. “Dinner with my husband and children. And you inspector?”

“Possibly taking up an invitation from a fellow officer I initially turned down,” Javert tells her. “I’m hoping he and his wife will still have me.”

“Well good luck,” Madame Belmont says. “Merry Christmas, Inspector Javert.”

He nods at her again, leaving the interaction with a sense of satisfaction, even if he feels awkward. He remembers DuFour’s address from going there after an emergency with one of their cases. He walks down mile or so distance with rapid, determined steps.

He hopes he hasn’t ruined his chance.

He knocks on the door of a small, humble home, listening for the sound of footsteps. The door comes open and DuFour jumps in surprise, apprehension flashing through his eyes.

“Inspector Javert!” he exclaims, hand grasping the doorknob tightly. “I…is something the matter? Did I mishear when you said I could have the day? I…”

Javert waves his hand and DuFour falls silent, still looking nervous.

“No no, nothing is the matter,” Javert replies, taking his hat off and half crushing it in his hands, a habit he usually finds grating. “I…well…”

“Alexandre?” a voice calls out, and Javert guesses it must be DuFour’s wife.

The woman in question appears in the doorway with a curious smile. “And who is this on Christmas morning?” She pauses, clasping her hands together. “Oh! Is this Inspector Javert? I thought you said he couldn’t join us today?”

“I couldn’t.” Javert meets DuFour’s eyes, trying to discern if he’s still welcome. DuFour nods, giving him a tiny smile. “But things have…changed, if you’re still willing to have me.”

He’s certainly not telling them he was haunted by three spirits last night. He’s certain _that_ wouldn’t go over well.

He’s still not sure it happened.

“Oh of course!” DuFour’s wife says. “I’m Simone, by the way, it’s lovely to meet you. Alexandre talks about you all the time, and how much he’s learned from you.”

“He’s an excellent officer,” Javert answers, watching his underling blush. “I have a few Christmas errands I need to run, but what time should I arrive?”

“Five o’clock,” DuFour says, looking as if he’s in a pleased but in mild state of shock. “Don’t worry about bringing anything.”

Javert tips his hat at them. “I can at the least bring some wine. Thank you for offering to have me…I…” he struggles with the words and the idea that someone might want him at their Christmas table. With the idea that he _wants_ to be at anyone’s Christmas table. “I am looking forward to it.”

They wave him off after that, and he considers his second errand.

He has no idea how to approach it, but he thinks it might be best with flowers.

He’s no expert at picking out flowers. He doesn’t think he _ever_ has picked out flowers.

The florist suggests lilies.

He traces the path he took with Valjean—with a spirit! Perhaps he is insane—back toward Cosette and Marius’ house. Yesterday at the station, in the entire year and six months since the barricade and the bridge and the dark night when Cosette inadvertently stopped him from dying, he had no idea where to begin. He wanted to change and didn’t all at once. He didn’t know where to start or how.

Now, he did.

He knocks on the door, understanding the absurdity of coming here on Christmas morning.

But he has to.

Perhaps the spirits are with him still, because Cosette herself answers the door rather than one of the servants, her curly brown hair done up elegantly with baby’s breath tucked into the intricate braids.

“I…Inspector Javert.” Cosette stares at him, looking down at the lilies and then up again.

“If you would like me to go I entirely understand,” Javert says, grasping the stems of the flowers tighter. “If not, may I have a word?”

Cosette nods, a mix of sadness and anger and concern in her eyes all at once.

“First, thank you for what you did for me that night on the bridge,” Javert continues. “I would be…well I would at the bottom of the Seine, if not for you. And…well…I know you have at least some pieces of my hand in what happened with your mother. I was cruel to her in her most vulnerable time and let her go to her end in fear rather than in peace and I am so sorry.” Javert sucks in a breath, feeling his hands shaking. “I cannot make up for it, but I wanted to come here to tell you that. And to tell you your father was a good man. A good man who changed me.”

Cosette gives him a watery smile, and he hears her breath hitch, clearly conflicted. “Did you receive my notes?”

“I did,” Javert says. “I have them I only…I was so ashamed that anyone could have seen me that night on the bridge. And I knew you were Valjean’s adopted daughter, and therefore Fantine’s and I…I did not know where to begin. But after an _experience_ I had, I realized the only place I could begin was apologizing to and thanking you.”

 A bright light gleams in Cosette’s eyes now, and Javert’s reminded of the sunbeam shining on her mother and warm glow of the candlelight flooding in under his door when Valjean visited him.

She indicates the flowers. “Are those for me?”

“They are,” Javert answers. “I hope you like flowers?”

“I love them.” Cosette’s smile widens, and Javert understands why this young girl had such an effect on Valjean: despite the grief in her eyes, she looks so very alive. “Would you come in for a little while?”

Javert finds there’s a smile on his face too. “If it’s not a bother, I’d like that, Madame Pontmercy.”

“Cosette,” she says, accepting the flowers from him. “Just Cosette.”

 


End file.
